


each after its kind

by Lasgalendil



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, M/M, Pre-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Watching Someone Sleep, comics Nicolo di Genova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27780046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: Yusuf looks at his lover and thinks of spring, of birds ill-matched, yet happy mates.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 13
Kudos: 78





	each after its kind

Nicolò isn’t beautiful.

His eyes are empty, like looking through glass. It is unsettling—startling—even, to look for human warmth and intelligence and instead find the coldness of a corpse. Their gaze is even more alarming: one of his eyes doesn’t quite line up with the other, lags behind, even when he blinks. It is a defect that may have been corrected had he been a child in al-Andalus or anywhere else in the civilized world. His eyes, from their nonexistent color to this strange, unnerving sluggishness are alien. Frankish.

And his skin. His skin is the stuff of nightmares. Yusuf has traveled much, taken the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, ventured north to Cordoba and Damascus, as far east even as Baghdad, once journeyed south by camel on the salt trade to witness the golden city of Ghana. He has seen rich, dark skin in browns and blacks so deep they were nearly purple, knows his own is so pale and blotchy with freckles in comparison, missing that beauty of intense saturation and evenness of tone. But Nicolò’s? Nicolò’s is another matter entirely. It is bone white, lacking any color at all save where it becomes an angry red, dried and burnt in the sun, peeling off in translucent scales like snakeskin. Between this strange skin and his lifeless eyes he looks like a thing undead.

Nicolò’s nose is long, hooked, slightly crooked. Too large for his face. His features themselves are plain. One of his cheekbones is not as full as the other, casting half of his face into shadow. His shoulders are too broad, his arms too long, his large, bony hands like clumsy spades. Yusuf’s own hands are fine-fingered and dexterous, suited to calligraphy, fine brush-work, writing, and weaving. Nicolò’s belong on the arms of an ape.

Yusuf prefers fine cottons and linens, intricate trim and textured weaving, has his clothes re-dyed regularly to maintain their vibrant colors. But Nicolò? Nicolò could wear the same woolen hose and linen shirt bare, patch and mend and hem so many times they became a shapeless, muddled grey-brown like lichen.

No. Nicolò isn’t beautiful. And yet—

Yet Yusuf has grown accustomed to this sight. Fond. The face and features he had once found the antithesis of beauty are somehow now its very definition. It isn’t as if they had changed, as if immortality had somehow granted them grace, or that Nicolò had grown into his oversized shoulders and hands and nose or that time had fixed his stabismus. No. It is because they are Nicolò’s shoulders they are no longer gangly but strong, hard-working, humble. It is because they are Nicolò’s hands those blunt fingers, wide nails, the large knuckles and wrist bones so shockingly prominent on the ends of his arms are now works of sculpted marble, and Yusuf longs to touch, to taste, to memorize the shape and scent of them. It because it is Nicolò’s nose that the stark lines of it are no less softened, but have become both comfortable and familiar. It is because they are Nicolò’s eyes he can see them now like the sea, no longer empty but changing color with the clouds, reflecting back the sky, their movement not mirroring each other but still dancing together, like sun and moon, like waves on the shore. His mended clothes with their washed out colors and mess of wool and linen and cotton patches are no longer childish in their simplicity but a statement of utility. He knows now Nicolò’s choice of dress is due not to a naïve lack of aesthetic but rather a conscious shunning of it.

No. Nicolò isn’t beautiful by any societal standards. Yet Yusuf looks at his lover and thinks of spring, of birds ill-matched, yet happy mates.

**Author's Note:**

> Gina really looked at comics Nicky and cast Luca Marinelli like queen, babe, giving that man a bad haircut does *nothing* to detract from his attractiveness but you go, girl live that dream


End file.
